Attack on Anime: Raid on Activity

Published by Halfey Halphstein, January 17th, 2016

I think I've found the (candidate for) anime of the season, Active Raid.

Asami is BEST.

Remember the anime Rail Wars? This somehow reminds me of that because it significantly involves trains and railways. They also happen to be enforcing laws and keeping the security, except that unlike Rail Wars, those guys in Active Raid are actual policemen and policewomen.

If in the previous preview for the anime The Prince of Stride, I did complain about the excessive (unnecessary) use of bishounen, I found that it didn't give me a problem in Active Raid. Yes, the dudes in the Active Raid team are what I think would fit the definition of bishounen. However they're not the focus. In fact the focus was properly on the actual main character, Asami Kazari, the newbie in the team.

I want to see more of this.

Active Raid is an experimental unit under the police force where the field officers are equipped with a suit, exoskeleton or whatever you might want to call it, named Willwear. Willwear gives the wearer somewhat a superhuman ability similar to the Ironman suit. However access to Willwear is not limited to the police only and apparently civilians can also purchase them for personal use. In one occasion in the anime, there was a reference about the suit is worn by construction and rescue workers too.

As Active Raid is an experimental unit, the team structure seems to be unstable and the whole team seems to be lacking discipline too (being late to work is normal to them) much to Asami's disapproval. Asami was aware of this problem and prior to transfer to the unit she was planning to 'transform' the unit to be more police like.

By the way the Active Raid unit seems to not have their own permanent office. Their operations are mainly being run in a train-truck hybrid vehicle that would put the war machines in Mad Max to shame. This train-truck also can be equipped with 4 propellers that would transform it into a quadcopter. The reason they don't have a proper machine is probably because they're experimental but it's still too early to assume that.

The awesome truck-train that is also a quadcopter.

What I really like about this anime is it isn't 'shy' to give the audience some 'service'. Just look at the screenshots below:

What do you think after seeing those screenshots? No, this is not 'that' kind of anime. Even with those things, they felt perfectly normal, fits well with the story and didn't feel like a deliberate or forced attempts to show the PAN. Is that not enough to convince you? Well, if you're still not convinced then I feel sorry for you.

What I found weird about the 'police' in this show however is the male officers' haircut, where some of them have a long hair that you normally would never find on a male officer in real life. I'm a police officer myself and where I work we have a strict policy on how we should cut our hair, applies to both male and female officers, where we must not let our hair grow past a certain length. AFAIK only some officers in the Special Branch are allowed to keep long hair and beard. Well, it's not like I'm complaining about those dudes in this show having longer hair that what I'm allowed to have. In fact I envy them. IO wish I could have long hair too... I possible I want to keep my hair long enough that I can make a ponytail.

Back to the anime, since Active Raid is still an experimental unit, they seem to have to follow a certain rule, like not showing their face to the public when they're in their Willwear suit. Part of it is also due to the unit often getting criticism and complaint due to how they handle their operations, like violating policies and inflicting heavy collateral damages. Asami tried to change that but unfortunately in one occasion she also committed what she wanted to avoid, which is causing heavy collateral damage. Poor Asami.